Since the events of September 11, 2001, the Western gaze towards Islam has been refracted through a deeply distorted lens, one in which expressions such as “Islamic extremism,” “Islamic terrorism,” and “Islamic fundamentalism” have become reflexive descriptors for any act of violence, particularly when the perpetrator is Muslim.
This interpretive framework, nourished in part by political and strategic agendas, has entrenched a “clash of civilisations” narrative, casting Islam not as a faith anchored in a noble moral code, but as a civilisational and religious enemy of the West.
Within this intellectual climate, it has been neither common practice nor politically palatable in the West to acknowledge that every religion, including Judaism, harbours radical fundamentalist strands.
While extremist Islamic rhetoric has been dissected in countless studies, conferences, and policy reports, other manifestations of religious extremism, most notably Jewish extremism, have received little comparable scrutiny. Yet such currents, embodied in certain groups, institutions, and political figures, openly espouse hatred, incite violence, and justify their actions through uncompromising interpretations of sacred texts.
Jewish extremism is not a fringe anomaly nor the product of isolated fanaticism. It is, rather, the culmination of a long historical process of exegetical thought within certain religious streams, anchored in the conviction that Jews are “God’s chosen people” and superior to all other nations, described in Talmudic discourse as “goyim” (non-Jews).
Under certain interpretations, the blood and property of such outsiders may be taken, and in some circumstances, they may be killed or enslaved in the service of Jewish survival and supremacy.
This ideology has not remained confined to theological manuscripts. It has manifested in political and militant movements such as Kach, founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, which unapologetically called for the expulsion of Arabs from the “Land of Israel,” incited violence against Palestinians, and envisaged an ethnically and religiously pure Jewish state achievable only through the “purification” of the land from non-Jews.
Kahane did not stand as an isolated radical; he voiced a coherent current within political Judaism. Many of his adherents remain active in the settlement enterprise today, with some occupying parliamentary or ministerial positions in successive Israeli governments.
A striking case is that of Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, co-author of The King’s Torah, which sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children, if they pose even a potential future threat to Jews. Despite widespread outrage both in Israel and abroad, the book has neither been banned nor subjected to judicial condemnation, and it remains in circulation in settler communities. Shapira himself maintains that the killing of goyim is permissible when it serves Jewish security or interests.
Similarly, Rabbi Dov Lior, a former spiritual leader of the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, has declared that “the Torah permits the killing of non-Jews” and has refused to denounce Israeli massacres of Palestinians, describing them as part of “purifying the land for the Jewish people.”
Lior endorsed The King’s Torah and defied police investigations into his alleged incitement to racial hatred. His stance resonates with a growing constituency of religious Jews who believe that the State of Israel should be governed by Torah law rather than secular legislation.
Equally troubling are the remarks of Rabbi Eliyahu Riche, who has openly described Arabs as “animals” and argued that “it is better to kill a thousand innocent Arabs than to allow a single Jew to be killed” without facing legal repercussions.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, former rabbi of the Beit El settlement, went so far as to argue that pregnant Palestinian women may be legitimate targets, since they could give birth to “future terrorists,” a ruling whose extremity surpasses even the rhetoric attributed to the most notorious militant groups. Such thinking has given rise to the symbolic invocation of the “Amalek Torah Angel,” a term employed by certain rabbis and political leaders in Israel to portray soldiers and defenders of the state as angelic warriors combating evil.
This religiously infused supremacism has spilled into the political mainstream. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s current minister of National Security, began his career in the extremist Kach Movement and famously displayed a portrait of terrorist Baruch Goldstein in his home. He has defended settler violence, called for Palestinians to be killed under legal sanction, insisted repeatedly that “a Jew’s life is worth more than an Arab’s life,” rejected the civic rights of Arabs in Israel, and labelled them a “fifth column.”
No less influential is Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism Party and architect of some of the most draconian anti-Palestinian policies both within Israel and across the Occupied Territories. As finance minister, he also controls the Civil Administration under the Ministry of Defence, effectively serving as the military governor of over three million Palestinians in the West Bank.
Smotrich has declared that “the Arabs are here by mistake, and we will correct that mistake” and proclaimed that the Palestinian town of Huwara should be “wiped off the face of the earth.” Despite international criticism, domestic rebuke was muted. Smotrich is an unapologetic advocate of Jewish supremacy, a proponent of subordinating democracy to Torah law, and an influence on Israeli school curricula that promote hostility towards Arabs, Muslims, and even Christians.
Such education normalises the occupation, legitimises discrimination, and erodes any foundation for a just peace.
Parallel to these figures stands Simcha Rothman, a prominent Knesset member and leading proponent of the so-called “judicial overhaul” designed to curtail the powers of Israel’s Supreme Court and ensure that an ultra-religious Jewish majority can legislate without legal restraint. Rothman envisions Israel as a purely Jewish state with no space for equal civic rights for non-Jews.
It must be stated unequivocally: anti-Semitism – hatred of Jews as a religious or ethnic group – is a moral abomination and a reprehensible form of racism. Condemning Jewish extremism does not constitute an attack on Judaism as a faith, nor does it undermine the equal rights of Jews as citizens. Exposing the hate speech of certain rabbis or politicians is a moral imperative to confront all forms of supremacism and violence. The measure of justice lies not in the perpetrator’s faith but in the nature and gravity of the crime and in its corrosive impact on human peace.
By the same principle, in the same way that many Western nations criminalise anti-Semitism, they must also criminalise Islamophobia and the persecution of Muslims. The danger is clear: permitting the perception of a Christian-Jewish Western alignment against Islam, where Jewish extremism is excused so long as it targets Arabs and Muslims, risks deepening civilisational fault lines.
Christian Zionism, particularly prevalent in the United States, teaches that supporting Israel is part of a divine plan and that the return of Jews to the “Promised Land” is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ. This belief has helped deter certain Western powers from condemning Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, or even from labelling the devastation in Gaza as genocide or ethnic cleansing, despite the categorical rejection of Christian Zionism by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and by many Protestants, who view it as a distortion of Christ’s message of peace and equality.
The contemporary world stands in urgent need of a renewed commitment to cultural and religious pluralism. Civilisational diversity is not a threat but a reservoir of human richness and resilience. Portraying a “clash of civilisations” as an inevitable showdown between Islam and the West, while ignoring Jewish extremism, is a dangerously reductive misreading of global conflict.
Many of history’s most destructive confrontations have been fuelled by illusions of superiority and claims to exclusive truth. For genuine peace and security to take root, all forms of extremism – Islamic, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise – must be confronted without fear or favour. Only through such principled consistency can the vision of a just and peaceful coexistence be realised.
The writer is a senator and a former assistant to the foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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